Not Christianity, But Christ is the Answer

Have you tried Christianity and thought it wasn't the answer?  Did you once go to church and feel unchanged by your experience there?  Are you one of the many who have turned away from the faith because of a Christian's hate speech and hypocrisy?

The all too important, but often overlooked fact is that not Christianity, but Christ is the answer.  Christianity isn't supposed to change you, Christ is.  Christianity is a religion, a system of life and belief that consists primarily of hurt and broken-down people who are earnestly trying their best to seek after Christ and bring all people under Him in order to advance His kingdom and bring honor and glory to the Lord and Savior of all creation.  They are imperfect as are you.  They make mistakes as do you.  And there are some very well meaning people (and also some not) in Christianity that do and say some very wrong things, as there are some outside of the faith as well.  Just because someone labels themselves as a Christian, it doesn't mean that they are the best representative of the Christian church, or of Jesus Christ Himself for that matter.

Do not fault Christ for His followers.  Do not let His people dissuade you from the truth.  If I or anyone else is not smart enough or loving enough or good enough to convince you that Jesus Christ is the answer, it doesn't stop the truth from being true.  And the altogether, wholly complete, all things considered, matter of fact, absolute truth is that you still need Jesus in your life and that a life apart from Christ isn't life at all but entirely meaningless.  It isn't enough to attend a church.  It isn't enough to be a better person and do good things.  It isn't enough to say a prayer to accept Jesus into your heart.  If your Christian experience or experience with a Christian wasn't life giving, then you have yet to encounter Christ.  And I hope and pray that you will have that encounter... soon.

Love Began

For much of my life I used to think that life begins when love begins, but, as I think about it now, love began well before life ever did.

Love Unfounded

Alone you lie,
Whether next to someone or not.
For something sits at the pit of your stomach.
A hunger.
 Unsatiated, unsatisfied, unfulfilled
By what you thought was love,
What you thought was real.
But it was not –
Or it doesn't seem to be,
Not anymore at least.
How strange it all seems
As it worked out so well
Ten thousand times on screen.
And a million songs about it
Framed your every feeling so well,
They all could've been about you.

But where did it all go wrong?
Where is your happy end?
Talk with the troubadour,
Sit with the storyteller,
And you'll likely be confounded
By a love unfounded.
Like getting a grasp of unsolid ground,
Love cannot be summarized in three minutes or less,
Nor can the real deal be caught on a 90-minute reel.
And yet they still try.
And still we buy into their lies.
We're formed by misinformation,
By hackneyed hacks of half truths
Who haven't their story straight.

There's something to it, though,
And that's why we still listen,
That's why we continue to tune in,
That's why we're willing to believe
In something we cannot see,
Nor grasp.
We can get on one's case
For believing in the ethereal,
But that's exactly what we do with love.
But what else are we to believe in 
In this crazy, broken world we live in
But in love?
It keeps us up at night,
But powers us through our days.
It's the only thing worth living and dying for –
But we don't even know the half of it.
And that's why we can never get enough of it.

We only know how it makes us feel
And that we cannot go on without feeling it –
And never do we go beyond that.
So we do what we do best
With such a precious commodity.
We consume it and control it,
We horde it and we whore it
Until we bleed our better halves dry of it.
But it simply is never enough
Simply because of this one reason:
We're having a one-sided affair with love.
Our lives have been based
On an incomplete definition
Off of an idea
Whose thought was never thought all the way through.
We've only been living from a fraction of our souls,
A portion of our true potential.
So how can we know the real potency of love
When we limit our understanding of life?

It'll never be enough to put love in a box
And tie a nice bow on it.
Or to frame it up for you and your friends
To look at and admire.
The only way we'll ever be whole
Is to be wholly open.
And the only way we'll understand love
To its fullest extent
Is to be open to the one who first loved.
What is love to the author and creator of love?
The answer may surprise you.
Love truly is the most splendid splendor
Which needs no window dressing
And cannot be contained.
Not by a box.
Not by a frame.
Not even by life itself.
So why do we try to?

Why do we strain to contain it
And see it not for what it is
But what we want it to be?
The most appealing presentation
Isn't always the most accurate representation.
Nor is it the best.
Love actually may be where you left it a while ago
Lost, abandoned, and forgotten
Because of a misunderstanding
Of something you were not willing to understand.
Where truth and understanding reside,
There, love will be.
Don't manipulate and murder
For a knockoff of the real thing.
Don't pay with blood, sweat, and tears
For what is cheap plastic
When true love is already a free gift
Whose price has been paid
By the one who gives it away unconditionally.
And its rewards can be redeemed only
When you love in return.